Srinagar: Valley’s lone Mental Health Institute, Badamwari, is facing acute shortage of faculty and paramedical staff to run the institute. The Institution is witnessing a huge rush of patients that the hospital administration is unable to handle with limited resources in hand.

The hospital with the staff strength for one hospital is also running a parallel Drug De-addiction Centre at SMHS, affecting the functioning of the parent institute at Badamwari badly, officials said.

“With limited staff in hand, we have to run two parallel institutions at the same time, which is adding to the already existing scarcity of human resources,” said Dr. Muhammad Maqbool Dar, HoD Department of Psychiatry.

The hospital is running 24 hours functional emergency service, taking care of several patients in its In Patients Department (IPD), “apart from running the entire chorus at the main hospital, we are also running de-addiction centre at SMHS, which is making it difficult for us to keep up with the nature of services we are meant to provide,” he said.

At de-addiction centre, the department is running a full-fledged facility to treat drug addicts, besides maintaining several patients admitted to the centre.

Though the hospital administration has many a times sent a proposal to the health ministry asking them to provide them with the additional human resources.

However, so far, there has been no response from the authorities, giving a tough time to the hospital administration.

“We have sent a proposal and that too, several times impressing upon our needs, but so far it has all fallen on deaf ears, and subsequently our work at both the institutions is getting affected,” he added.

Apart from faculty, the hospital is also in need of support staff, such as security guards and paramedical staff, which they have included in the proposal that has been sent to the government.

“Our doctors and other staff are always on the go, as they have to look after certain things and certain at SMHS, which is making it hard for them to remain focused,” he said, adding that the patients are also suffering due to this schedule.

According to the data given out by the hospital, during 2016-17 (until February), Mental Health Institute, Badamwari has received 2157 OPD patients, while treating 175 IPD patients. During 2016-17 (until February) the Drug De-addiction centre, SMHS received 535 OPD patients, and treated 212 IPD patients.